


See How the Vipers and Vultures Surround You

by Lexicon_V



Series: It's a sad song, but we sing it anyway [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: AU the Empire finds Jyn first, Angst, Gen, Prison life, Wobani
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:40:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23901721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexicon_V/pseuds/Lexicon_V
Summary: “When the door finally flings open, Jyn is certain this is a dream. A nightmare. A new one, but just a nightmare all the same.Because the Man in White has walked in, cape streaming behind him, and he sits down across from her.”Krennic finds “Liana Hallik” before the Alliance.
Series: It's a sad song, but we sing it anyway [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1722400
Kudos: 10





	See How the Vipers and Vultures Surround You

_“Hey, little songbird, cat got your tongue?_

_Always a pity for one so pretty and young_

_When poverty comes to clip your wings_

_And knock the wind right out of your lungs_

_Hey, nobody sings on empty_

_..._

_Hey, little songbird, look all around you_

_See how the vipers and vultures surround you_

_They’ll take you down, they’ll pick you clean_

_If you stick around such a desperate scene_

_See, people get mean when the chips are down”_

_-Hades_

Jyn struggles to balance as she’s dragged down the hall by two ‘guards, one gripping each arm. Her hands are bound behind her back and the restraints cut into her wrists. She can feel a trickle of blood run down her left hand. 

They shove her into an interrogation room and shackle her feet to a durasteel chair bolted to the floor. One guard leaves, the other stands behind Jyn, too close, with his shock stick crackling in her ear. There are no windows, just a one-way mirror on the wall opposite her. She glares at the reflection of the guard and commands herself to breath evenly and slowly. She doesn’t know why they pulled her out of her cell in the middle of the sleep cycle, but she will give them nothing. 

“You should smile more, Hallik,” the guard jeers. 

Jyn considers baring her teeth at him, but the petty gesture isn’t worth the risk. Not when she doesn’t know if he’s come for her before, or might come for her again. Not when she’s still trying to sort out what, exactly, is going on. 

She is left to sit there, shackles cutting in, the shock stick at her back, for what feels like half an hour or more. When the door finally flings open, Jyn is certain this is a dream. A nightmare. A new one, but just a nightmare all the same. 

Because the Man in White has walked in, cape streaming behind him, and he sits down across from her.

He settles into his seat and fusses unhurriedly with the datapad in his hand. He hums as if he’s reading something of mild interest. 

“Liana Hallik,” he drawls. “Forgery of Imperial documents, possession of stolen property, aggravated assault, resisting arrest.” 

Jyn stares at her reflection over his shoulder, mastering her expression. She does not look at his face. She does not speak. It could be a coincidence. It’s been well over a decade and a dozen aliases since she last saw him. He hadn’t even seen her then, she’d been hidden. The last time he saw her face she was practically a baby. She’s unrecognizable to him. He probably can’t even keep track of all the lives he’s destroyed since hers. 

“That doesn’t even include the crimes you’ve committed as Kestrel Dawn or Tanith Ponta.”

The color drains from Jyn’s face, but she keeps her breathing steady. Those are just aliases. Any Imperial officer could find them in any Imperial database. And yes, he’s connected them to her. That’s not great, but...

“Yes,” he hisses at her. “I know all your aliases, _Jyn Erso_.”

The sound of her real name lands like a blaster bolt to the chest. Instinctively, she tries to stand, tries to fight, but her hands and feet are still bound. The guard raises his shock stick, but the Man in White waves him away and motions to Jyn to sit back down.

“Miss Erso, no need for hostility. You are being rescued,” he smirks. “Please do not resist.” 

“What do you want from me?” she grinds out.

He gives a condescending tsk. His eyes rake over her lank hair, hollow cheeks, and filthy, starving body. “What a pretty thing you might have been, if your mother hadn’t been so… misguided.”

Rage flares behind Jyn’s eyes. Her limbs shake with the desire to lunge across the table and kill him with her bare hands. She could do it. She could collapse his windpipe with one hit. If it weren’t for the binders, she could steal the shock stick and take out the guard and the Man in White. Her hands itch to feel his throat in her grasp. He has no idea what she could do to him.

“I’m here to offer you salvation. A happy family reunion. The chance to live in comfort and safety with your father by your side.”

Her head is spinning as she tries to keep up, to process what is happening. Her father is alive. The Man in White knows where he is. They are...friends? Did her fath- _Galen-_ send him? 

“Fuck you,” she spits viscously. “Galen Erso is a coward and you are a murdering bastard.”

The spit doesn’t reach the Man in White and he rolls his eyes with paternalistic exasperation. “I know you spent your life with that unhinged fanatic, Saw Gerrera. I know he filled your head with all kinds of specious ideas, and your mother before that.” He waits a beat. “And I know he abandoned you.”

Jyn takes a deep breath in through her nose. He knows everything. How? When? If he’s known where she was all along, why come for her now? What game is he playing? 

He continues, mockingly sympathetic. “After something like that, you must have been furious. Certainly, your escapades across the galaxy since have shown that you are quick to anger and capable of killing without reservation. So, I have an offer that I know you’ll be quite eager to accept.”

Jyn had her share of confirmed kills, but she balks at his characterization, even as the murderous rage continues to hum in her hands. She killed in war and she killed to survive. 

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know everything I need to.” He is unflappable and dismissive. “I will bring you to Saw Gerrera’s last known location, you will infiltrate his base and then you will do both of us, and the galaxy, the favor of killing him. Afterward, I will bring you to your father to live as a beloved prodigal daughter of the Empire.”

She swallows down the bile that rises in her throat. “I’ll do myself and the galaxy a favor and kill you instead,” she says, and she promises herself it’s true. 

There must be something she can use here. The Empire has an entire military industrial complex capable of infiltration and assassination. “If none of your highly trained agents can get anywhere near him, what makes you think I can? You said so yourself- he ditched me. He won’t welcome me back.”

He leans in and his voice is low with malice. “Look around you, _Jyn._ Do you think you’re in a position to negotiate? You aren’t. Look at yourself. You will die here. Alone, cold, hungry, surrounded by indifference. Even if you managed to survive? You could never hide from the Empire again. What I’m giving you is your one and only chance at anything that resembles freedom. You’ll find a way to do what I ask. You don’t have any other options.”

She expects to die here on Wobani, just as he described. She has no one on the outside who might spring her. She has no leverage with the guards, who just take what they want from her any time they wish. It’s day after day of hard labor and meagre rations. She is under constant threat of attack from prisoners and guards alike. Jyn has been starved, beaten... and worse. She has served six months of her 20 year sentence and she doesn’t think she’ll survive six more. If she spits in his face again, it’s all but certain she won’t even survive long enough to walk out of this room. 

But on the outside, she can find an advantage. She has disappeared a dozen times since she was eight years old. If she can just get off Wobani, she’s sure she can do it one more time.

She glares at him, but she nods. 

“Now,” he says to the guard behind her, and a tracker is injected into Jyn’s back, between her shoulder blades, where she cannot reach. Jyn yelps in surprise and pain.

He rises and looks down with a satisfied smile. “Now, Miss Erso, let’s go to my shuttle. I have so much to tell you.”

***

The next day, a labor transport is attacked and boarded by a rebel cell. 

“Hallik! Liana Hallik!” one of them shouts, scanning each face onboard.

“She’s gone,” says an alien woman with a tentacled face. “Taken in the night.” And she laughs a bit madly.


End file.
